221
Beria personally ordered Zoya Zarubina, the stepdaughter of NKGB General Leonid Eitingon (who had arranged Trotsky’s assassination), to choose the furniture for the conference. There was no round table so it had to be made. Since the conference was a closely guarded secret, Beria told Zarubina to go into Teheran city and pretend to order a table to seat twenty-two “for a wedding.”
222
Roosevelt presumed he was being bugged but hoped the results might fortify Stalin’s confidence in his honesty. Sergo Beria’s account suggests this worked.
223
In a piece of interpreter mountebankism, the second Soviet interpreter Valentin Berezhkov described how Stalin rehearsed the meeting and how Roosevelt came to Stalin’s residence without an interpreter. In fact, Stalin went to Roosevelt’s rooms where Chip Bohlen interpreted for the Americans and Pavlov for the Soviets. Pavlov was Stalin and Molotov’s interpreter in English and German; Berezhkov occasionally worked for Molotov. The only part of this incident that holds together is Stalin rehearsing positions, which was typical of him. Perhaps Berezhkov did witness this scene.
224
Major Hugh Lunghi, whose interview has greatly helped with this account, is probably the last man living to attend all the Plenary Big Three meetings at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam.
225
Hugh Lunghi typed up this farcical exchange and asked Churchill to sign it for him the next day. As interpreter for the British Chiefs of Staff, he also deputized for Churchill’s principal interpreter, Major Arthur Birse.
226
The Americans thought he was the maitre d’ and at the end of the conference were going to present him with some cigarettes when they found him resplendent in the uniform of an NKVD Major-General.
227
Stalin had specially invited Elliott to the dinner. Perhaps he sensed the similarity with his own scapegrace son, Vasily. Both were pilots, inadequate yet arrogant drunks who were intimidated and dominated by brilliant fathers. Both exploited the family name and embarrassed their fathers. Both failed in multiple marriages and abandoned their wives. Perhaps there is no sadder curse than the gift of a titanic father.
228
Stalin made one joke about Maisky, the ex-ambassador to London, who was present, that was not translated. The Russians though laughed uproariously at it so Brooke asked him what was so funny. Maisky glumly explained, “The Marshal has referred to me as the Poet-Diplomat because I have written a few verses at times but our last poet-diplomat was liquidated—that is the joke.” The original Poet-Diplomat was the Russian Ambassador to Persia, Griboyedov, who was torn to pieces by the Teheran mob in 1829. Maisky was later arrested and tortured.
229
A month later, the editor of
230
The President was exhausted and ailing. His suite had a living room, a dining room (the Tsar’s billiard room), bedroom and bathroom. His closest adviser Harry Hopkins was so ill that he spent most of the time in bed. According to Alan Brooke, General Marshall “is in the Tsarina’s bedroom” and Admiral King “in her boudoir with the special staircase for Rasputin to visit her!” ‡ Stalin told his version to Enver Hoxha, the Albanian leader.
231
There is an intriguing note in the archives concerning Churchill: a General Gorbatov reports to Beria on 5 May that orders had been sent to the NKVD with Marshal Malinovsky’s army in Hungary to find a relative of Winston Churchill named Betsy Pongrantz and she had been found. The meaning is not precisely clear but none of the Churchills have heard of this “relative.” Sir Winston’s surviving daughter Lady Soames is unaware of the existence of this possibly Hungarian kinswoman: “Perhaps Mr. Beria and the NKVD had just got it wrong!” she suggests.
